At the beginning of March 13-year-old Mitchell Johnson was a choirboy, attending church by himself, with a reputation for behaving like a gentleman towards his female friends.

But on March 26, he appeared in court in Jonesboro accused of five counts of murder after the massacre of four pupils and their teacher at Westside Middle School.

Mitchell Johnson

"He seemed like such a neat young man," said Janice Holt, the pastor's wife who taught Mitchell at the Bono Revival Tabernacle.

"I thought when they were talking about the camouflage clothes, he must have more camouflaged on the inside than what we could see on the outside," she continued.

That neatly illustrates the emerging picture of Mitchell, who moved to Arkansas from Minnesota two years ago when his parents divorced. Pastor Holt remembers Mitchell becoming introspective and talking frequently about missing his father.

"He was always a really good friend to me," said 13-year-old Melinda Henson, who considered Mitchell to be one of her better friends.

"I mean, I could tell him anything, and he wouldn't say anything to anybody," she continued. But she admitted that the boy who held her chair for her in church also talked about wanting "to hurt people" and claimed to be part of a gang.

Two weeks before the attack Mitchell stopped going to church. "He always had some type of red on every day, because he was in the Blood Gang," said Melinda Henson.

"He started doing all these gang signs. I told him he should stop that because he was starting to scare me," she continued.

Mitchell is believed to have masterminded the attack, angry that his girlfriend Candace Porter had left him. Gradually people in Jonesboro are beginning to realise the warning signs were there, but went unheeded.

Kate Tate, 11, said Mitchell had told several pupils he was going to shoot Candace Porter.

"Mitchell said he was going to shoot Candace, then kill everyone in the building," she said.